M kneels next to the toilet and pours the last cup of water into the bathtub behind her back. Peering passed the doorway, she checks to see if anyone is nearby before sifting through the contents of a worn, plastic bag and dumping them into the porcelain bowl. The smell of decaying bones, rotting meat, and runny tofu punishes her nose yet she doesn’t react, mixing the putrid substance with one hand while searching for the pints of blood with the other. When she finally finds them, she rips each bag open with her teeth and pours her blood carefully over the congealed mess. She folds the pile continuously with her hand, the frigidness of her own blood numbs her fingertips.
The mixture is almost blended to her satisfaction when she hears footsteps approaching. Grabbing a handful of her special blend, she places the bloody mess near her mouth and forces herself to gag while her free hand tentatively hovers over the toilet’s handle. Her body convulses as if she’s been vomiting and she hopes her act is convincing enough for whoever appears in the doorway.
“What the hell are you doing, M? Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?”
M looks up, her dull eyes lighten when she sees her visitor. Sighing with strained relief, she continues mixing without another word and wipes the rotten meat off her cheek with her forearm.
“Did you hear me?” the boy in the doorway asks, covering up his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “For the love of God, it reeks. Why would you do this to me?”
“It’s not like you’ve noticed before,” M says, shrugging her shoulders while flashing the boy a weak smile. She rummages through her bag with her clean hand and retrieves a giant plastic box with a locking lid. “You’re back early.”
“You’ve made this before?” he asks, closing his eyes tightly and shaking his head as if blocking his sense of vision will help deter the smell. “That’s not the point. This isn’t what I think it is, is it? Grum? Or whatever you decided to call it?” He asks the question to himself and she doesn’t provide an affirmative answer. “Where did you find fresh animal blood to make it, huh? Making this shit has been banned long enough for even you to get your hands on it.”
“Who said it was animal blood?” she asks. Flashing the curled bandage around the crook of her elbow, she rearranges her position on the floor and gets up on her knees. The boy stares at her in disbelief, the color draining from his face.
“I’ve been getting my blood drawn twice a week. It’s not enough. It lasts me a trip and a half at most. It’s the only thing that attracts them.” She pauses and cranks her head from side to side. “I take that back. It’s the only thing that attracts the ones worthwhile.”
“They banned making this for a reason, M,” the boy reprimands, his voice quivering with anger as he struggles to point at the toilet bowl. “Scientists have proven it wasn’t effective at luring anything, let alone whatever you’re still trying to chase. It’s not worth the time, energy, or the nasty mess you have to clean up.” He winces and looks at the blood-stained porcelain. “Hell, the amount of blood you’re losing isn’t healthy. You’ll pass out in the forest and we won’t even know it. What would mom and dad say about this?”
She shrugs again, her eyes blankly stare forward. “They can’t say anything. They’re dead.” Casually piling the rancid concoction into the box, she watches the bloody tofu slide off her hands. “Besides, it’s the government who wants us to believe it doesn’t work. They’re afraid inexperienced civilians will attempt to use it.”
M squeezes the meaty lumps into the container’s corners, the dark brown juices seeping between her fingers. “The evidence you’re referencing only tested pigs’ blood. Human blood works the best. The government interrupted any concrete research when rebels from the south started hunting sanctioned militia for their body parts to lure the dead.”
“For God’s sake, M. That’s just a story they say so you don’t travel alone,” her brother argues, his face contorting in horror. It’s not true.”
“I’ve seen this work,” M says, ignoring her brother’s remarks by continuing to pile more grum into the container. “That’s evidence.”
Shaking, her brother combs his fingers through his coarse hair. “I know you don’t care about what you put yourself through, but did you have to do this in our bathroom?”
“Like I said, you never noticed it before,” she says, locking the lid on the box with her blood-soaked hand and rinsing the grime away in the bathtub. “It’s better if you don’t come home early again.”
“Whatever you say,” the boy says, his voice shrill with annoyance. “But tell me how you get the smell out. I need to know in case you die and can’t come back to clean up your mess.”
His voice sounds childish as he presents his cheap joke, but she doesn’t react. She pulls out a tub of disinfectant wipes, the faded colors of a past brand are unrecognizable. “I buy these.”
“How did you afford those?” he asks, his eyes widen in disbelief. “Unless you applied for a new position with the janitorial staff, those would cost us a fortune. We’re not allowed to buy unassigned items for a reasonable price.”
“Fine, I’ll stop buying them,” M says, wiping her hand on her pant leg and flushing the toilet. The bowl gurgles loudly and the boy preemptively lunges for the plunger despite most of the gruesome concoction being removed. M slides the box of grum into her backpack as she hauls her items out of the bathroom without looking back.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it,” he says loudly, eying the bowl carefully to make sure it doesn’t overflow. “I just don’t want you blowing all of our cash on this shit. It’s not worth it.”
M doesn’t respond and wanders into their living room. She decidedly sits on the corner of their weather-stained cot and cracks her knuckles, examining the drying blood underneath her fingernails.
“What I do pays for everything,” she whispers. “It’s a perk that enables me to keep moving forward.”
“You don’t have to do this, any of this,” he says, placing the plunger down and rushing to sit next to his sister. “We don’t need luxuries when we live in a place like this.” He tries to put his arm around her and she flinches, her head shaking silently as his arm recedes back to his side. “We’re as safe as we can be.” He urges her to move closer but she doesn’t budge. “What are you trying to prove?”
“Nothing,” M says, turning to study her brother. He looks the same as before but he’s changed too much since the Fall happened. He’s kinder than he used to be, more forgiving. The new world has had a different effect on her.
“Are you trying to fix this?” he asks, jutting his arms out wildly as he gestures around the room. “Because there are plenty of people trying to do that. You don’t need to be one of them,” he says. He places his hands on both of her shoulders and doesn’t move when she flinches once more. “Sneaking out and making rotten sewage in our bathroom so you can hunt zombies isn’t worth dying for. Can’t you see that you could be doing something more meaningful than what you’ve resorted to?”
M laughs humorlessly and pushes her brother off. “Rest assured, Jack. I’m not trying to save anyone. Neither of us are worthy of preservation.”
Jack slowly removes his hands from her shoulders. Frowning, he’s quick to change the topic of conversation. “So the zombies, the ones that pay for disinfectant wipes,” he starts. “You trap them because they’re worth more money, right?” he asks. “Why’s that? No one here can tell the difference.”
“The virus is mutating,” M says, her eyebrows rise as she stares at her brother. “Always has been. I’ve come to find that sometimes the bite won’t make you turn, it just kills you.”
What little color in Jack’s face has completely faded and he swallows abruptly.
“The fresher ones, the ones who just died, they’re the ones who are still causing people to turn,” M continues. “Those are the ones the pharmaceutical companies want, and the government. They compete for the bodies obtained humanely so they can run experimental antibodies to find a cure. It’s what keeps them busy.”
“Meaning they’ve taken them inhumanely before?” Jack asks.
She shrugs. “It’ll happen eventually. No one will stop until they’ve defeated it. It’s human nature.”
“But then it’ll be over,” he whispers. “Someone will get lucky and we either find a way to defeat it or the ones who are infected will die out. Apparently we know they don’t last forever. It’s just a matter of time before there’s nothing left to do but go back to the way it was.”
“Not for us,” she says, her voice clear and somber. “We’ll only have before and after the Fall. There’s no going back.”
“God, M, don’t be so melodramatic,” Jack says, getting off the cot and heading towards the kitchen. “You want anything to drink before you go?”
“Water,” M says. “And five ice packs. The grum doesn’t last forever.”
“How much do you get for one of the good ones?” Jack asks “A body that’s just been turned?”
“I don’t want to tempt you,” M says, lacing the straps of her backpack around her wrist. “There is a reason they keep letting me out to do this.”
“Are you impenetrable to corruption?” Jack asks, rolling his eyes and throwing M an old, faded bottle full of water. She catches it without looking.
“No,” M says, twisting the top off and taking a long drink. “I’m as corruptible as anyone.” She presses the cool plastic to her face. “I do it because I’m not phased by what I’m doing. The ones who would do it for the money alone would hesitate. No one in this colony can conquer the dead.”
“No one except for you?” he asks, his voice teetering on the verge of exasperation.
M takes the ice packs from his hands and stuffs them in her bag before grabbing a tiny ring of keys from his pants pocket.
“For now.”